Breakfast of Champions: Chapters 18–22

by Kurt Vonnegut
As a fiftieth-birthday present to himself, a narrator who signs off as Philboyd Studge describes the lives of science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and automobile dealer Dwayne Hoover, before and after they meet at a 1972 Arts Festival in Ohio.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Preface–Chapter 3, Chapters 4–11, Chapters 12–17, Chapters 18–22, Chapter 23–Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. capricious
    determined by chance or impulse rather than by necessity
    They were slow and tinkling, with capricious silences here and there. Bunny’s blues had some of the qualities of a music box, a tired music box.
  2. torpid
    slow and apathetic
    They tinkled, stopped, then reluctantly, torpidly, they managed a few tinkles more.
  3. incognito
    without revealing one's identity
    I had come to the Arts Festival incognito. I was there to watch a confrontation between two human beings I had created: Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. I was not eager to be recognized.
  4. piety
    righteousness by virtue of being religiously devout
    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line
    Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
  5. render
    cause to become
    The past has been rendered harmless.
  6. exalt
    praise, glorify, or honor
    He also began to assemble in his mind a system of beliefs which would be appropriate to his narrow mission in Midland City, which was to show provincials, who were bent on exalting creativity, a would-be creator who had failed and failed.
  7. extravaganza
    any lavishly staged or spectacular entertainment
    He won all those medals in the Second World War, which was staged by robots so that Dwayne Hoover could give a free-willed reaction to such a holocaust. The war was such an extravaganza that there was scarcely a robot anywhere who didn’t have a part to play.
  8. inertia
    the tendency of something to stay in rest or motion
    Here was the thing about my control over the characters I created: I could only guide their movements approximately, since they were such big animals. There was inertia to overcome.
  9. swindle
    deprive of by deceit
    You will be swindled by termite exterminators and not even know it.
  10. minimalist
    of or relating to extreme simplification of form and color
    And it was time now for me to have Rabo Karabekian, the minimalist painter, and Beatrice Keedsler, the novelist, say and do some more stuff for the sake of this book.
  11. elude
    be incomprehensible to
    And now I drew a symbol whose meaning Dwayne had known for a few years in school, a meaning which had since eluded him.
  12. likeness
    picture consisting of a graphic image of a person or thing
    Karabekian, who wore a sweatshirt imprinted with the likeness of Beethoven, knew he was surrounded by people who hated him for getting so much money for so little work.
  13. recoup
    regain or make up for
    She meant to recoup all the money her husband had lost in the car wash in Shepherdstown, and she ached to have steel-belted radial tires for the front wheels of her automobile.
  14. levity
    a manner lacking seriousness
    There were bowls of such buttons around the Inn, for anybody to help himself to, and the dishwasher had taken one in a spirit of levity.
  15. whim
    a sudden desire
    The lights weren’t on just now. The bartender turned them on at random times, at his own whim, in order to give the customers a delightful and mystifying surprise.
  16. patron
    someone who supports or champions something
    It had been loaned to the Festival by Eliot Rosewater, the patron of Kilgore Trout.
  17. vain
    having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
    I had created him, and he was in my opinion a vain and weak and trashy man, no artist at all.
  18. galvanize
    cover with zinc
    Her voice became as unpleasant as the noise of a bandsaw’s cutting galvanized tin.
  19. preposterous
    inviting ridicule
    It is the immaterial core of every animal—the ‘I am’ to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us—in a mouse, in a deer, in a cocktail waitress. It is unwavering and pure, no matter what preposterous adventure may befall us.
  20. unwavering
    not showing abrupt variations
    A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us.
  21. rococo
    having excessive asymmetrical ornamentation
    His bared shins were rococo with varicose veins and scars.
  22. azure
    bright blue in color, like a clear sky
    I gave him my father’s feet, too, which were long and narrow and sensitive. They were azure.
  23. appendage
    an external body part that projects from the body
    Trout now crossed Sugar Creek on my father’s legs and feet, and those appendages became more nacreous with every wading stride.
  24. plausible
    apparently reasonable, valid, or truthful
    And when he sketched a plausible molecule, he indicated points where it would go on and on just as I have indicated them—with an abbreviation which means sameness without end.
  25. polymer
    a naturally occurring or synthetic compound
    And it is in order to acknowledge the continuity of this polymer that I begin so many sentences with “And” and “So,” and end so many paragraphs with “…and so on.”
  26. hamper
    a basket usually with a cover
    I escaped down a rope of sheets taken from a reeking hamper.
  27. rapture
    a state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion
    “Mr. Trout,” he said in rapture, “I’d know you anywhere. Welcome to Midland City. We need you so!”
  28. brocade
    weave a design into
    Trout simply walked away from the desk and sat down on a brocaded Spanish-style settee.
  29. settee
    a small sofa
    Trout simply walked away from the desk and sat down on a brocaded Spanish-style settee.
  30. anecdote
    short account of an incident
    They would come out and tell anecdotes about the person later on.
  31. tumor
    an abnormal new mass of tissue that serves no purpose
    She concluded that her mind was useless, that it was a sort of tumor, that it had no usefulness within the rabbit scheme of things.
  32. effusive
    uttered with unrestrained enthusiasm
    He thought maybe a lot of people were going to greet him as effusively as Milo Maritimo had done, and he had had no experience with celebrations like that.
  33. involuntarily
    against your will
    But then Trout hunched forward involuntarily, buckling the starched shirt bosom, forming it into a parabolic dish.
  34. ornate
    marked by complexity and richness of detail
    The emblem consisted of a Greek goddess on an ornate chaise longue.
  35. allot
    make possible to have
    Kilgore Trout probably couldn’t have made his trip from New York City in the time I allotted, but it’s too late to bugger around with that.
Created on Tue Dec 19 15:27:53 EST 2023 (updated Wed Dec 20 12:38:02 EST 2023)

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